This is one of the best and most insightful pieces I have ever read, and I want to thank you for it. This help me put the pieces together between several lines of our current dysfunction in a way nothing else I've read ever has.
As a teacher (currently in a working class private school where I have far more flexibility than in public scho…
This is one of the best and most insightful pieces I have ever read, and I want to thank you for it. This help me put the pieces together between several lines of our current dysfunction in a way nothing else I've read ever has.
As a teacher (currently in a working class private school where I have far more flexibility than in public school, formerly in a large urban public school district) the one addition/clarification I would add to this is that by and large classroom teachers have little control over this and are often doing our best to fight against the tide on this. The standardized testing movement may not have been originally intended to dumb us down (although considering Ross Perot and GW Bush were at the forefront in 80s/90s Texas, it may have been), but the net result has been a process intentionally designed to fail: the texts on standardized reading tests are often 2 grade levels above the tested grade (see Mimi Swartz in 2019 Texas Monthly and the related academic research on that) so teachers face a massive uphill battle. Curricula have replaced analyzing books with short passages and multiple choice questions based on sleights of language and not on making connections across literature. Social studies books are written so far above grade level that most students can't understand them so they never learn history. And all of that curriculum and test prep is being shilled by massive for-profits like Pearson, while teachers are threatened with job loss if their students fail to make "adequate progress" on tests.
We've had political parties outright oppose the teaching of higher-order thinking skills in their platforms, and people in this ideological lane control the Texas Board of Education, which adopts standards and textbooks for the state and which has a disproportionate influence on other states' course materials due to the volume of material purchase in Texas.
Educators know the importance of critical thinking and do the best we can against this stacked deck. But it can be overwhelming and we aren't able to fully develop these skills in every student given the resources we are given (try teaching 6 25 student classes with one 45 minute prep period per day).
And we can't lose sight of the fact that all of this is by design. The people designing our education standards and materials want to profit off of our struggles, and the people determining which politicians win *want* our graduates to be unable to put the pieces together about why our society is so incredibly dysfunctional.
As educators we're doing the best we can, but we can't do it alone, and we can't do it with even less resources than we have now. We need support.
This is one of the best and most insightful pieces I have ever read, and I want to thank you for it. This help me put the pieces together between several lines of our current dysfunction in a way nothing else I've read ever has.
As a teacher (currently in a working class private school where I have far more flexibility than in public school, formerly in a large urban public school district) the one addition/clarification I would add to this is that by and large classroom teachers have little control over this and are often doing our best to fight against the tide on this. The standardized testing movement may not have been originally intended to dumb us down (although considering Ross Perot and GW Bush were at the forefront in 80s/90s Texas, it may have been), but the net result has been a process intentionally designed to fail: the texts on standardized reading tests are often 2 grade levels above the tested grade (see Mimi Swartz in 2019 Texas Monthly and the related academic research on that) so teachers face a massive uphill battle. Curricula have replaced analyzing books with short passages and multiple choice questions based on sleights of language and not on making connections across literature. Social studies books are written so far above grade level that most students can't understand them so they never learn history. And all of that curriculum and test prep is being shilled by massive for-profits like Pearson, while teachers are threatened with job loss if their students fail to make "adequate progress" on tests.
We've had political parties outright oppose the teaching of higher-order thinking skills in their platforms, and people in this ideological lane control the Texas Board of Education, which adopts standards and textbooks for the state and which has a disproportionate influence on other states' course materials due to the volume of material purchase in Texas.
Educators know the importance of critical thinking and do the best we can against this stacked deck. But it can be overwhelming and we aren't able to fully develop these skills in every student given the resources we are given (try teaching 6 25 student classes with one 45 minute prep period per day).
And we can't lose sight of the fact that all of this is by design. The people designing our education standards and materials want to profit off of our struggles, and the people determining which politicians win *want* our graduates to be unable to put the pieces together about why our society is so incredibly dysfunctional.
As educators we're doing the best we can, but we can't do it alone, and we can't do it with even less resources than we have now. We need support.